Conspicuous consumption of music, live and otherwise.

March 18, 2014

Agenda.

Frustrating to be posting an ostensibly timely feature a day late, but life and work sometimes collude to prevent free time. On the other hand, curiously enough, I hadn't made note of any particular events for Monday or Tuesday — go figure. My agenda for The New York Times this week is lively and diverse, including two visits to the Ecstatic Music Festival and a first date with a familiar ensemble recently reconfigured.

Polymath pianist and composer Timo Andres gathers a small group of similarly multifarious artists for the world premiere of a new song cycle, Work Songs, based on texts by authors and poets who've written about their working processes. Further selections by Kahane, Hearne and Stevens round out the program, which repeats in St. Paul, MN, on Friday and Saturday.

Multi-instrumentalist Colin Stetson is widely celebrated for his rigorous yet songful unaccompanied saxophone pieces, but he's also proved adept at integrating his conception with those of song-based bands like Bon Iver and Arcade Fire. Here, he's presenting a new piece with the unfailingly bold Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and also leading an all-star avant-rock band in a rendition of Gorecki's Symphony No. 3. "What's it got to do with classical music?" one colleague demanded. Let's find out.

I've been privileged to hear the Emerson Quartet many times before, but never with cellist Paul Watkins, who joined the band last year. That alone would make this concert worthwhile, but hearing Shostakovich's Quartets Nos. 11 and 12 (with a Mendelssohn intermission) is a major plus.

Elsewhere and -when

Wednesday, March 19: Matt Ingalls at the Old Stone House of Brooklyn (more)

Wednesday, March 19: John Zorn: Masada, Book 3 at the Town Hall (more)